For someone like me (a western European, mother of two in her mid forties, living in relatively stable financial circumstances) the world of prostitution and human trafficking can seem very remote. Probably many women in Western Europe feel this way. This, however, might be a big mistake on our part. To take a stand against the trafficking of women isn’t important only for humanitarian reasons, or out of solidarity with other women. To take a stand should be close to our hearts, because it is in our very own interest. One doesn’t have to be against prostitution in general to see that a huge increase in the supply of cheap sex for men, is not exactly beneficial for the balance of power between the sexes. If sexual services are constantly available at low prices, these services become affordable to more and more men, more and more frequently. That this can have a lasting effect on the attitude of the punters is demonstrated vividly in an encounter Mary Kreutzer and Corinna Milborn describe in their book Ware Frau (2008). The two journalists went to a night club in Lagos where they met a sixty year old English businessman whose family (wife and three daughters) had remained in London.
‚He tells a girl to get him a drink and says triumphantly: ‚In England nobody would get me a drink; a beautiful woman like that wouldn’t even take a look at me back there. But here older people get respected.‘ He isn’t bothered by the fact that he has to pay for both sex and respect. ‘All women are prostitutes, even my wife in London – after all, she lives off the money I’m sending her.’
This last statement took my breath away the first time I read it, since it reveals that he no longer distinguishes between prostitutes and other women, we are all “paid for”. Men don’t have to be transferred to Lagos to be able to buy sex at 30 Euros, or even less. Here in Germany low price sex services are readily available in most (if not all) major cities. Even in Munich where prices are presumed to be the highest in Germany there are nine designated areas for street prostitution where sex is offered at a cut price (Munich also has about 180 brothels and similar establishments; TZ, 31.1.2014, p.8).
Most women are probably inclined to think that their partners aren’t punters and have a different attitude to women from the businessman in Lagos. But can they really claim the same of other men in their lives with any degree of certainty? Men, in other words, who might determine their future, their professional success? The issue here is not to condemn men who frequent prostitutes, but to emphasise that the availability of paid for sexual services does mean that a woman, or rather her sexual self, becomes a commodity. The easier this commodity is available, the cheaper it becomes, the less its value. And then, one day we might find we have all lost in value. If we don’t want this to happen, we ought to take a stand against the trafficking of women.
(The title of this post is taken from the report, Stolen Smiles)
www.europarl.europa.eu/workingpapers/libe/pdf/109_en.pdf
www.migrationpolicy.org/article/trafficking-women-nigeria-europe